


Leave the Dust Behind

by nascentgalaxies



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Barebacking, Bloodplay, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, References to Childhood Sexual Abuse, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:46:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nascentgalaxies/pseuds/nascentgalaxies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is inexplicably turned on by violence. Derek doesn't like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave the Dust Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written back when there were only vague hints about season 3, so pretty much anything to do with the Alpha pack has been Jossed already. Oh well. 
> 
> Title is from [this song](http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107859441884/).
> 
> Feel free to say hi to me over on [tumblr](http://nascentgalaxies.tumblr.com/), folks!

            It's dark as they move through the woods, an empty place in the sky where the moon should be. Derek’s feet are noiseless in the rotten leaves and undergrowth, quieter even than the nature around them, and _definitely_ quieter than Stiles, behind him. Stiles might as well be shooting off flares for how obvious he makes their presence, to humans or otherwise.

            Stiles’s breath is shallow and thin, panicky, the adrenaline rush of the fight finally catching up to him. Scott had sped away from the scene in the Jeep, Derek’s Betas in tow, and somehow, once again, Derek’s the one left to take care of Stiles.

            Stiles is nursing a scratch on his right forearm just below the elbow. The smell of blood is overpowering.

            Derek can tell it’s still bleeding freely. But at least he knows the Alpha who hurt him is dead, because Derek had torn out his throat the moment he had dared to rake his claws across Stiles’s papery flesh. The rest of the Alphas had fled—for the time being.

            Derek doesn’t want to believe killing someone for Stiles means anything. It _can’t_ mean anything. He _won’t let it_ mean anything _._ Instead Derek trudges onward, with Stiles at his heels. Stiles hasn’t spoken in such a long time it has to be a world record for him.

            As though he’s read Derek’s mind, Stiles chooses to ask, in an oddly sombre tone, “Where are we going, Derek?”

            “To my old house,” Derek says. “We need to clean you up before I drive you home.”

            Stiles nearly falls right into Derek when he ducks under a low-hanging branch and slips on wet earth. Derek grabs him by his good arm, hauling him upright. Stiles’s heart trips with him, and the sound, as always, prickles, needle-like, into Derek’s abdomen.

            “Relax,” Derek says. He catches a spike of something like fear, sharp and sour, through the coppery scent of blood.

            “I know, I know, it’s just, y’know, adrenaline,” Stiles says, gesturing vaguely at his chest. “And I would appreciate it if you guys would stop eavesdropping on my bodily functions. It’s creepy.”

            Derek smirks in secret and keeps walking ahead of Stiles. Stiles puffs away behind him, a walking bundle of so many scents and sounds and impressions that Derek wouldn’t know where to begin to decode them all. And he doesn’t want to. That would mean opening himself up to a world of _Stiles,_ something Derek isn’t, and never will be, prepared for.

            Within minutes they arrive at his old house, with its pervasive, oppressive odour of ash and mould. Beneath all the blackened wood are the charred bones and charred memories of Derek’s family. Yet it feels like home as Derek leads Stiles up the steps and through the front door. He’s heedless to how much darker it is inside, even darker with the new moon’s added blanket of shade. He heads up the stairs to the bedroom he once occupied at the end of the hall, before the subway station and before he finally started renting an apartment downtown.

            Stiles’s pulse stumbles into overdrive again when he steps over the threshold, and the scent of blood is stronger than ever. Derek shoots a brief, exasperated glance over his shoulder.

            “You’ll bleed out even faster if you don’t calm down,” Derek says, tearing the blankets off his old mattress and shredding the clean but musty sheet into a long strip. “I don’t have a first aid kit. This’ll have to do for now.”

            He pads back across the room to where Stiles has been watching him, lingering anxiously in the doorway. Derek yanks his injured arm closer, fingers tight around Stiles’s wrist. He can feel the pulse flutter under his index finger.

            Derek won’t admit to how much gratification he reaps from the sight of Stiles swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Or from the quick, wet flicker of Stiles’s tongue as he licks perspiration from his upper lip.

            Derek is the most terrible person alive for liking it.

            Sometimes he thinks it’s Kate’s fault, for making him terrible.

            No. No. Most of the time it’s just Derek’s fault.

            He tugs Stiles’s arm closer, and Stiles, with it, as he leans down to close his mouth over one of the rivulets of blood trickling down from one of four scratches on Stiles’s forearm.

            “What are you—” Stiles starts. He cuts himself off on a shudder when Derek runs his tongue up from the edge of Stiles’s wrist to the beginning of the first scratch, running vertically up his arm, all the way to the tender skin inside his elbow. It fills Derek’s mouth with the taste of sweet copper, and of something he can only describe as _Stiles_. He can’t get enough of it. Stiles whimpers, and Derek hates himself for liking it, just as he hated himself for liking it, six years ago, with _her._ “Shit, fuck, what are you doing?”

            “I have to clean the wound,” Derek tells him, and it’s not a lie, even if there is a cold, heavy wrongness in his gut.

            “That _can’t_ be hygienic.”

            But Stiles doesn’t try to drag his arm away. Instead he is trembling, just like he was when they were stuck in the pool, and again, when he fell on top of Derek, pumped full of Kanima venom. Stiles had been vulnerable, then, but Derek had been, too. Now, Derek isn’t vulnerable—he’s perfectly in control. He could break Stiles, if he wanted. But for some reason he doesn’t.

            Instead he laps at a smear of drying blood near Stiles’s elbow, and at a thick bead of it at the edge of the smallest scratch. Once Stiles’s arm is wet and raw, but clean, he swipes his tongue up each individual scratch. He does it until Stiles is chewing his lip and barely holding back little keening sighs that twist in Derek’s gut.

            Through the taste of Stiles’s blood, overpowering everything, Derek can just barely catch something spicier, headier, on Stiles—something Derek’s not sure he wants to touch upon.

            By now Stiles’s bleeding has slowed, despite the quick beat of Stiles’s heart. Derek straightens up, licking the blood from his lips. Stiles provides a soft, breathy whine and rocks back onto his heels, and Derek has to bite down on the growl that yearns to escape him in response. Instead he shakes out the fabric he’s had fisted in his free hand. He begins to wrap the linen around Stiles’s arm, trying to pretend he isn’t hard in his jeans and that he isn’t the worst person to walk into Stiles’s life.

            But _he is._

            Derek is only a sooty outline of what he was before the fire. An innocent fifteen-year-old boy burned away with the rest of his family six years ago. He can’t let anyone witness even a ghost of that boy. He would be bearing his throat to them, to reveal anything resembling that innocence, and he can’t have that. Because Kate stole everything when she’d broken down his walls.

            Derek will not be the one to break down someone else’s walls, either. Not if he can help it. That would be almost as bad as letting someone else in.

            For once he can be grateful that Stiles is human, that he can’t scent Derek’s swirling haze of arousal and insecurity. He finishes wrapping Stiles’s arm, without a word, and without a word from Stiles. If he was anyone else – or if he was closer to Stiles, maybe – he would ask him why he’s so uncharacteristically quiet. But he isn’t, so he doesn’t ask.

            Instead Derek takes a step back, taking in Stiles’s eyes, blown black in the darkness, and the way he sucks in his lower lip, waiting for something to happen. For a split second, standing there in the darkness, surrounded by the ghosts of his family and the reek of rotted wood, Derek is struck by an unfamiliar feeling of _rightness_. Like they belong here, two opposites, day and night, pressing in but never quite touching, two magnets with the same charge. 

            Because _that_ – touching – that would be wrong. The rightness is gone in a blink, and Derek responds to its disappearance with a gruff, “I’ll drive you home.”

            Stiles fumbles around with his pockets and eventually extracts his cellphone.

            “I’ll, uh, text Scott, see what happened with him and your pack.”

            Derek nods his assent. They make their way back downstairs, out into the starlit night and into the Camaro Derek parked behind the house. They don’t speak during the fifteen-minute drive to Stiles’s house.

 

***

 

            Derek was on the cusp of sixteen when he lost his virginity. She had been on top, and she had whispered in his ear about how bright his eyes were. About how much she wanted to be with him, since the moment she’d seen him at the pool.

            She had said she wanted to devour him. 

            She had devoured him.

 

***

 

            Derek finds himself rocketing into Stiles’s orbit again, two weeks later, pushing him out of the way of yet another Alpha who needs to die. It slams them both into the dirt, in the clearing where the Alphas have decided to challenge Derek for his territory and fail at tempting Scott into taking a place in their pack. It knocks the wind out of Stiles, who chokes out a breath and fists Derek’s jacket in both hands.

            There’s snarling behind them. The scent of spilled blood. It’s Peter, slicing open one of the twin’s throats. Stiles is swearing below him and Scott is somewhere near the edge of the clearing, he and Isaac teaming up against the female Alpha. He can’t remember her name. Not that it matters, since she’ll be dead soon, anyway.

            Their leader, Deucalion, is behind him, huge and wolfed out, casting a shadow over the both of them. Stiles realizes belatedly, with a squawk, that one of Lydia’s Molotov cocktails is lying on the ground beside him where he dropped it in his fall. Derek jumps out of the way in time for Stiles to snatch it up and lob it, dead centre, at the Alpha’s chest. The fire bursts and spreads across Deucalion’s fur. The noise he makes is half howl, half scream. He sprints away through the woods, burning, stinking of burnt hair and burnt flesh. What remains of his pack tries to flee, but more fires are exploding across their bodies, across the grass, thrown from the edges of the clearing by Lydia, Allison, Erica and Boyd, as they’d planned in the beginning.

            The screams double, triple, and it’s so much noise Derek wants to slap his hands over his ears. But then it’s like the night remembers to breathe again and it’s all over. There is a shrill whine from the female Alpha. Then nothing.

            “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Stiles gasps out, chest heaving, eyes wide and white. Derek is still crouched next to him, exactly where he landed when he jumped out of his way. “That was—that—”

            “Awesome?” Derek asks, smiling irrepressibly.

            “I was gonna go with _traumatic_ , but, yeah, no, whatever works for you, dude.”

            Derek looks down at Stiles, reading him the way his mother taught him to read people years ago. The terror and the resulting adrenaline has set Stiles alight; he’s leaning back on his elbows, his pulse is racing, and he’s wetting his dry lips. The sweet-sour scent of fear is dwindling, winding down to a finer, sharper scent that Derek knows. Even with the wretched cooked meat smell Derek can pick out the small thread of arousal. It was there when Stiles sat in the police cruiser and said, “I’m not afraid of you.” It was there when Derek put himself between Stiles and Isaac. It was there when he lapped the blood from Stiles’s arm weeks ago, hidden beneath the blood.

            It’s there now. A wire ready to be tripped.

            Derek sneaks too close to the wire, catching the honey-brown eyes with his. He won’t trip it, he won’t, but he wants to. Especially when Stiles’s gaze drops, lower, to Derek’s mouth.

            “Stiles! Are you okay?” Scott breaks them out of whatever trance they’ve fallen into. Derek stands and straightens his jacket where Stiles had been clutching the leather in his fists.

            “Y-yeah, I’m fine.”

            Boyd is helping Stiles to his feet now, and Scott is running over to verify Stiles’s well-being. Derek is, for once, glad that they haven’t been werewolves as long as him, or else they might smell Stiles the way Derek can. Or maybe it’s just Derek who is particularly attuned to Stiles.

            He won’t think about that.

            But if they knew Stiles, knew his scent, they might think something is wrong with him. They might think death and fear turn Stiles on. And that’s fucked up. That’s almost as fucked up as Derek liking it when Stiles’s heart beats like a battle drum when Derek does something like lick the blood from his arm. 

            If Derek’s the cause of Stiles’s rushing pulse, then it has to be fear, and it’s wrong.

 

***

 

            A few months later vampires had come to Beacon Hills, the culprits of vanishing blood transfusions at the hospital. They had come, and gone, after a confrontation in an alleyway in town. Derek’s pack and Scott’s humans had surrounded the three vampires and convinced them to leave Derek’s territory. The vampires were harmless, and never drank from humans. They had agreed to leave, tentatively, with Peter trailing them to make sure they weren’t bluffing.

            Stiles’s fingers had flexed and twitched on the handle of a bat, as he stood between Lydia and Scott. There was no mistaking the excitement trying to burst from Stiles’s skin the whole time. When Erica brings it up the following day, she’s sitting on the couch in Derek’s apartment with Isaac and Boyd on either side of her. She’s playing Skyrim while the other two watch and provide commentary. Derek’s behind the island in the kitchen, filling a bowl with Doritos.

            “Did you guys see Stiles? He was totally hot for those vampires.”

            Derek freezes halfway through picking up the bowl.

            “Yeah,” says Isaac, while Boyd chuckles.

            “You really think it was the vampires?” asks Boyd. “That kid gets turned by everything, Erica. _Especially_ when we’re in a fight.”

            “Ha, he should be a werewolf. If his reaction to violence is to pop a boner, clearly he’s built for this life.”

            “Or maybe De—”

            Derek drops the bowl down hard on the coffee table in front of them. They all stop talking and stare up at him like they had forgotten he was there. Derek doesn’t say a word as he sits down in an armchair beside the couch. They thankfully drop the subject before they can analyze the situation any further. But Derek sees Erica smirking when he snatches up the book he’d left on the arm of the chair. He chooses to ignore it.

            Instead he stares down at the pages of his book without seeing them. The words _Stiles_ and _violence_ echo in his head, and Derek thinks he might, in fact, be synonymous with violence. It would make sense. He doesn’t want it to be true—doesn’t want to be what Stiles is attracted to. It would be better if it were just the thrill of the fight that Stiles reveled in, and that Derek didn’t tie into it at all.

            But he knows better. He’s a werewolf. _He knows_.

            If Derek’s the violence, Derek will just be one step closer to being _her_. And he can’t have that. He won’t have that.

 

***

 

            Kate had been tender. She had been kind. She had been the perfect girlfriend to Derek when he was fifteen. Her age didn’t factor into it at all, even though she was seven years his senior. There were rare moments when a cruel sense of humour peeked through, but Derek had paid it no mind. He had _liked_ those moments.

            But then his house had burned down while he and Laura had been at school. He’d lost most of his family that day. Now violence is all Derek can think about when he thinks of Kate—when he thinks about sex. Sex had been her weapon against him, in the end, and it had cut him deeply. It would be a weapon if he used it against Stiles.

            Derek wants to. He wants to so bad. But Stiles is almost as young as Derek was. Even if he wasn’t, Derek couldn’t use violence against him.

            Instead, he’ll keep saving him.

            He’ll do it over and over again until he loses count.

 

***

 

            It’s the summer after the incident with the Alpha pack, and the teenagers are nearly finished their junior year of high school. Since Derek started renting an actual apartment he finds himself playing host to a surplus of teenagers more often than not. Today it’s all of them, his pack and Scott’s, though to Derek they’re all Pack. They’re meeting to gather all the information they’ve collected on whatever creature has been leaving half-eaten corpses around Beacon Hills.

            It ends up being a ghoul. The bestiary reveals that it lives in graveyards and takes the shape whoever it has recently consumed. There’s nothing on how to kill it. They all plan to meet at the cemetery in two day’s time, because teenagers have _lives_ , apparently, says Erica any time Derek tries to plan anything around her busy schedule. The kids leave in a hurry once there’s nothing more to discuss, leaving Derek to clean up the soda cans and chip crumbs they’ve left behind.

            And Stiles is the last one there, having not moved from the couch at all. Energy is practically flying off him in waves. Derek stares at him, hands full of empty cans, raising a questioning eyebrow at him.

            “So, we’re going to a graveyard,” Stiles says. His heart thunders, but Derek can tell it’s due to legitimate anxiety and not an unwanted reaction to Derek, or fear, or both. “That will be interesting.”

            Derek huffs, and places the cans on the island in his kitchen. The apartment has an open floor plan, so he can carry on a conversation with Stiles even when he leans forward on his elbows on the island. Bit by bit and battle by battle, Derek can admit they have grown more comfortable in each other’s presence. They’ve been invading each other’s space for well over a year now. Derek waits for Stiles to keep talking, knowing he will.

            Stiles has been shoving himself into all of Derek’s silences with more enthusiasm than ever before. After a few months of being forced into proximity with him Derek has realized Stiles’s words are never meaningless, even if they’re not always profound. They have a point, whether he’s going on about the backstories of the characters in Firefly or about what might, potentially, kill a ghoul. And Derek always listens.

            “Do you think—does the ghoul just take the form of the people it kills?”

            It’s so obvious where this is going that Derek’s breath catches. Not once has Stiles mentioned his mother. Sometimes when the other kids talk about theirs, a faraway look comes to Stiles’s eyes and Derek can smell the sadness, which from Stiles is strangely sweet.

            Stiles isn’t looking at Derek anymore; he’s staring down at his own fingers, plucking at a small hole in the knee of his jeans.

            “Yeah, that’s what I think.”

            Stiles’s head jerks up, eyes searching Derek’s face for a lie. He pales, for some reason shaken by the softness of Derek’s voice.

            “I haven’t seen any of my family up and walking around,” Derek says, quiet. “I think you’re safe.”

            He leaves out how most of them are buried on Hale property or ashes in the basement of his old house. Stiles’s eyebrows flinch inward at the flippant manner with which Derek brought up the fact that most of his family is dead. Stiles’s reactions to Derek’s family have always been visceral to Derek. Sugar-scented. It’s far more than Derek deserves.

            “I didn’t…” Stiles exhales shakily. “It’s just. My mom.”

            “I know, Stiles,” Derek steps around the island and makes his way across the living room. He sits down at his designated armchair, close to Stiles, but not so close that he’ll scare him away. “The bestiary said it has to devour the flesh to take on a human’s form.”

            Derek can hear Stiles’s panic rising, falling, and rising again. For once Derek wants to coax Stiles down, not up. It actually feels right to try.

            “If one of them showed up here pretending to be Laura,” Derek starts, slowly. Stiles looks at him again, eyes bright. “I don’t know if I’d be able to kill it. In theory I would kill it, but in practice…”

            “I guess that’s why Peter does our dirty work, huh?” Stiles says, with a bitter laugh.

            Sometimes Stiles seems to hate Peter more than Derek does, and that perplexes Derek more than anything. It can’t just be about Lydia. It’s something else. Something darker, like the taste of a sick old man’s blood in his mouth.

            “Stiles, I’ve told you. We need him.” Derek gets up again, restless. He picks up an empty chip bag and crumples it in his hand, taking it to the garbage can in the kitchen.

            “I hate what Peter did to you,” says Stiles, continuing as though Derek hasn’t stood up and walked away from him and, if he’s lucky, the conversation, “and I hate what Kate did to you.”

            Derek goes still, foot on the pedal of the garbage. The chip bag drops out of his hand, into the trash, and Derek turns towards Stiles, in slow motion, the air thickening around him, his blood running cold. 

            “What?”

            “I meant—the fire. What she did to your family.”

            Stiles’s heart stutters beneath his words, and Derek feels like he’s falling without anything, anyone, to hold on to.

            _He knows._

            Derek tries to keep from doing something drastic, tries to keep his voice steady, when he says, “How do you know about Kate?” The words are low and dangerous, and Stiles swallows audibly at the sound. 

            “I—I guessed.”

            “ _How_?” He snarls, taking a step closer.

            Stiles doesn’t back down.

            “Because she had to have someone on the inside, to know when to strike. I didn’t think anyone would willingly do that to their own family, so whoever it was must’ve been tricked. I assumed she would be the type to do that.” It all spills out of Stiles in a rush. He’s shaking, but so is Derek. Derek can’t bring himself to move any closer, or any further away, so he stands there, stock-still, hands fisted so tightly at his sides his nails cut into his palms.

            “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

            “Don’t,” says Derek. “Don’t you dare apologize. You’re not a part of this—you’re the _last person_ at fault.”

            Derek finally forces himself to sit. He ends up on the couch beside Stiles, three feet of space between them. Stiles is quiet for far too long. When he does speak, it’s hushed, like he’s afraid Derek will hear what he has to say.

            “It’s not your fault, either, Derek.”

            Derek stiffens. If Stiles had touched him right then, Derek’s sure he would bite off his hand. But Stiles doesn’t. His hands are gripping his knees as though he’s trying his hardest to resist the urge.

            “I blamed myself for what happened to my mom,” Stiles says. Something inside Derek unhinges, and loosens, when he looks at Stiles and finds him staring down at his hands again. The sadness is radiating off him, sweet and thick as beeswax. “She was in the hospital for so long, and I just—I wanted it to end, you know? And then. And then it did.” He links his fingers together to keep them still. “So I felt like it was my—like I was responsible for her dying and for her leaving and my dad—” Stiles’s shaky voice breaks, and crumbles.

            Derek understands. Or he would, if he wasn’t so _certain_ his whole family was dead because of him, because he let Kate in. Stiles swallows convulsively until he can continue without adding salty tears to his scent.

            “But it’s not my fault. She would be—she’d be gone, no matter how I felt at the time. And so would your family.” Stiles wipes at the unshed tears with his thumb, and there’s a swooping sensation in Derek’s gut.

            He likes this boy. More than any other boy. If Derek weren’t so very fucked up after what Kate did, he might even define his feelings with another word. A word he hasn’t thought of since the fire.

            “I _am_ sorry, Derek. I am,” Stiles says, as though he’s placating someone. Derek doesn’t know if it’s for Stiles’s own benefit or Derek’s.

            The feeling of affection doesn’t terrify Derek as much right now as it should. He’s brave enough, in fact, to move in closer to Stiles, to wrap his arms around Stiles’s shoulders and pull him in close. Stiles’s heartbeat stutters and slows at the feel of Derek against his side.

            It’s the right thing to do this time.

            The rightness doesn’t go away, either. It roots itself somewhere in Derek’s chest and stays there. Stiles drops his head on Derek’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything for a while. His breathing steadies enough that Derek would almost believe he had fallen asleep.

            “You’re better than a thousand Kates,” Stiles mutters, voice thick and sleepy and sad.

            And Derek wishes it could be true.

 

***

 

            Stiles uses his bat for the first time at the Beacon Hills Cemetery, two days later.

            The wolves have split up into groups, Derek with Peter and Isaac, Scott with Stiles and Lydia, Erica with Boyd. It’s Derek’s group who finds the ghoul, holed up in the Richardson family mausoleum.

            The ghoul has been using the same body for too long—its plain, middle-aged shape is beginning to deteriorate, bits of flesh peeling from a greying face. It’s more or less a zombie. As it stumbles out of the mausoleum, Derek thinks Stiles would love to see it.

            It needs to die, though, first and foremost.

            The ghoul stops ambling, stares hard at Derek, tilting its head, their presence obviously perplexing it. It then makes a beeline straight for Derek, inhumanly fast for a stinking, rotting corpse. Derek is so taken by surprise by its speed it manages to snag his wrists in clammy, powerful hands. Derek growls, fangs elongating, but Peter and Isaac manage to yank it backwards, away from him. It lands bodily on its back on the ground, roaring, raging in its desire to taste the power of an Alpha.

            Before any of the wolves can act, there’s a blur of red, like a smear of blood across Derek’s vision.

            Stiles is there. Derek hadn’t smelled him through the reek of decay, or heard him over the ghoul’s screams. His bat is clenched in both hands, and he puts all his strength into the downward swing. It hits the ghoul squarely in the face, spraying blood across the grass and up Stiles’s jeans. The ghoul’s screams turn to gurgling, then to nothing, when Stiles hits it again, and again, and again. It’s dead by the third strike, its skull a pulpy mass of blood and brain and fragmented bone, yet Stiles keeps beating it, shouting with each swing of the bat.

            “Stiles,” Derek says, while Isaac watches with wide, disbelieving eyes, and Peter looks mildly startled and slightly amused. “Stiles!” he yells, and finally he snaps out of it. Stiles stops, gaze snapping up to find Derek, his bat dangling loosely over what used to be the ghoul’s head. He is panting, his eyes so wild they seem to flash yellow under the crescent moon, and Derek thinks not for the first time that Stiles would make a pretty good werewolf.

            “It’s dead, Stiles,” Derek says, unnecessarily, trying for soothing, but Stiles’s clove scent tangles with pungent arousal when Derek says his name. He can hear his own breathlessness and knows Stiles can, too, by the way he’s staring at him.

            “Right, so, while you two do that, Isaac and I will get rid of the body,” says Peter, scathing and far too knowing.

            Erica’s there now, Derek realizes belatedly—she must have heard the screaming, or else seen Stiles running and chased after him. She smells almost as strongly of arousal as Stiles, and is standing off to the side and gaping at Stiles, biting her lip.

            Teenagers. Jesus Christ.

            “I’ll go find everyone else. Tell ‘em it’s dead.”

            She flees like she’s going to jump the next person she finds. Isaac looks uncomfortable, now, and Peter just rolls his eyes as he moves towards the body between them.

            Derek huffs out a sigh and starts towards the Jeep where he and Stiles had arrived, out on the street beyond the cemetery gates. Stiles drives Derek around a lot, these days, whenever the Betas borrow his Camaro.

            The cemetery is on the edge of town. There’s a wall of trees surrounding the gates, and in the evening there’s very little traffic out here. It’s the perfect place to kill a monster, really, besides the Beacon Hills Preserve. Stiles trails after Derek, reeking of blood and death and like something Derek longs to taste. When they’re nearing the Jeep, crossing the dew-slick grass, Stiles finally explodes.

            “Fuck, fuck, oh god, Derek, did—did I seriously just do that? I can’t believe I just did that!”  

            The words are machine-gun fire, rapid and without pause. Derek turns towards Stiles to quip some response, but it gets lost somewhere in his throat. Derek’s gaze ends up dropping, unintentionally, towards the obvious tent in the front of Stiles’s jeans, and Derek’s mouth actually _waters_.

            Derek is bad, he is _terrible_ , but he can’t help it, he’s sick of letting his fear get the best of him, letting _her_ get the best of him. Stiles’s pale face flushes, blood gathering in his cheeks and ears, when he glances down to see what Derek saw. But Derek won’t let him make any excuses. He lunges forward and snags Stiles by the front of his hoodie, using their combined momentum to shove him up against the passenger door of the Jeep.

            Stiles’s bat clatters to the ground. Stiles gasps, and Derek swallows it in a kiss. Stiles grabs hold of Derek’s jacket as though his knees are giving out, and to Derek it’s permission to lick into Stiles’s mouth and wedge a thigh between his legs.

            Stiles moans lowly into Derek’s mouth as Derek sucks on his tongue, nipping delicately at it. Stiles kisses back with as much fervour, if not more, until Derek’s lips wander to his cheek, his jaw. Stiles pants, hot and open-mouthed, against Derek’s cheek, and Derek forgets for a while why he didn’t do this sooner.

            Derek bites and sucks a hickey onto Stiles’s neck just under the ear, and he remembers in no time at all that he is terrible. He’s terrible because he wants to put his hands, his lips, his tongue, all over Stiles’s naked skin. He wants it so bad it’s a chronic ache in his chest. Stiles’s erection is insistent against Derek’s thigh, so Derek lets go of Stiles’s hoodie and slides his hands and body down Stiles’s body, falling onto his knees on the tarmac. He grips Stiles by the hips, nuzzling at the bulge in Stiles’s jeans.

            “Shit, fuck, Derek, _shit_ ,” Stiles hisses, hips pitching forward into Derek, where he’s mouthing at Stiles through the denim of his jeans. Derek has enough presence of mind to shoot a questioning glance up at Stiles, who simply grabs at Derek’s hair and presses him even closer to his cock like he’s trying to push Derek _through_ him.

            Derek groans. It’s too much, to be this close to his scent, to Stiles, who is _turned on by_ _Derek_. Derek unzips him, and then unceremoniously yanks down his disgusting, blood-spattered jeans with his boxers. It’s lucky they’re on the side of the Jeep facing the cemetery. The car that that sputters past is heedless to them, to the broken-off shout Stiles provides when Derek takes him in hand and sucks his leaking cock into his mouth.

            Stiles’s hips roll off the metal of the Jeep, jolting towards Derek’s mouth in constrained little jerks as Derek swallows him, cheeks hollowing, drooling onto his own hand wrapped around the base of Stiles’s cock. Derek needs to hear more. So much more. He wants to drive Stiles _crazy_. He grabs Stiles’s hips again with both hands and tugs him closer, sucking him down to the root. Stiles cries out as if he’s in pain. Derek pushes Stiles away by the hips, to the very tip of his cock, then repeats it, sucking him down, trying to get his message across.

            Eventually Stiles gets it. He’s gaping down at him with his lips parted, red and wet, his eyes drowsy with lust. He begins to fuck into Derek’s mouth, slow and careful, at first, but Derek can tell he’s getting close by the erratic beating of his heart. His pace is quickening by the second, the head of his cock brushing the back of Derek’s throat—but Derek doesn’t mind, takes it all, because he loves to see Stiles lose what composure he has.

            “Derek, fuck, I’m—” he starts.

            Stiles’s heart is thunder, his sighs hitching little whimpers. Derek moans around him and laps at the slit at the head of his cock, and he digs his nails into the round, fleshy cheeks of Stiles’s ass. In moments Stiles is coming on Derek’s lips, his cheek, before Derek wraps his lips around him again to swallow the rest. He sucks until Stiles is twitching and gasping and trying to fumble Derek away from him with trembling hands.

            Derek is unbelievably hard now. His mouth tastes of nothing but Stiles, and the blood is rushing in his ears. It feels like drowning. He thumbs a drop of come from his cheek and licks it, eliciting a strangled noise from Stiles. Stiles grabs at Derek’s jacket, trying to coax him back up. It’s interesting how often, lately, Derek has been rendering Stiles speechless.

            Derek hesitates, even though he _is_ hard, even though he wants it. When he stands, he does it slowly. Instead of kissing Stiles right away he leans his forehead against Stiles’s shoulder. He breathes him in deep. It is in that position, slightly bent in front of Stiles, that Derek peels open his button and fly and pulls himself out, swiping a thumb across the wet head of his cock. He twists his fingers around his cock, full of so much pent up need that he shudders, bites into the fabric of Stiles’s hoodie.

            “Let me,” Stiles murmurs, a desperate hand squeezing at Derek’s waist. Derek ignores him, shoves Stiles hard against the Jeep and rubs his cock into the soft, bare skin near Stiles’s hipbone. Stiles lets Derek grind against him without asking to touch him again. Instead he runs his hands up Derek’s chest, encouraging, stroking over his nipples so the pleasure tightens further in Derek’s abdomen. And Derek lets him.

            For a minute they’re both quiet, nothing but dazed huffs of breath and muttered curses, and Derek finds he’s steeling himself for the inevitable when he slows to a stop against Stiles.

            “Stiles,” he says, barely a whisper, “touch me.”

            Stiles obliges him instantly, wrapping warm fingers around his cock. He’s clumsy at first, but it’s enough, when Derek was already close, and his hips rut into the tunnel of Stiles’s hand around him on instinct. Stiles has only begun to get a rhythm going when Derek’s orgasm hits him, a punch to the gut, and he’s gasping and streaking come on his own shirt and the exposed trail of hair on Stiles’s abdomen.

            And then they’re just breathing against each other, against the Jeep, covered in the mess they’ve made of each other, and in Stiles’s case, blood. As Derek catches his breath, his mouth on Stiles’s collarbone, Derek thinks it’s strangely fitting for them to be wrapped in death the first time they touch each other.

            He comprehends what he’s done only then, only after he’s broken through Stiles’s walls and destroyed him from the inside out.

            “Sorry,” Derek says into Stiles’s skin. It’s probably the most honest he’s been about his feelings towards Stiles since he started having them. He tucks his cock back into his jeans and without sparing Stiles a glance he walks away, leaving him there, leaning against the Jeep, alone and debauched. Derek feels like he’s abandoning a crime scene, covered in blood.

            He runs all the way home.

 

***

 

            In New York, there had been both guys and girls. They would always fuck at their place. Never at Derek’s. Derek couldn’t risk them using their knowledge about him to their advantage. Any one of them could be an enemy. Derek would fuck them, or go down on them, and usually they would forget about trying to touch him or fuck him back. They could not be trusted with his body no matter how unbreakable it was. Nobody could be trusted—especially not humans.

            Except Stiles.

            Stiles has somehow slipped through the cracks.

            Derek had never stayed the night at anyone’s house before, had never _wanted to_. But this is different. He wants Stiles in his bed every night. And it’s more terrifying than any monster he’s faced.

 

***

 

            For a long time, Derek cringed away from relationships and whatever destructive force they might bring. He had been willing to be touched and held by Kate, at the time, but it’s harder, now, to be touched by anyone. It’s tantamount to being out of control.

            For six years he hadn’t trusted anyone not to tear into him and rip him to shreds. But he does trust the moon, the familiar way it crawls under his skin, tugging at his bones. He thinks, more and more as of late, of how much Stiles is like the moon. He’s been suffusing himself with Derek’s bones, his blood, his _everything,_ with Derek being none the wiser.

            Derek doesn’t know what to do with the way his blood simmers when he thinks of Stiles, but after sucking him off against the Jeep Derek’s ready to boil over. It’s been days since the incident and any time the pack has forced Derek and Stiles into the same room together Derek can’t bear to look at him, never mind listen to the chaos of his body.

            Everyone has left Derek’s apartment following their Friday Night Bonding Session, which tonight mainly involved pizza and watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at Isaac’s insistence. Stiles leaves with Scott alongside everyone else around midnight. Stiles had spent the evening joking around with Scott and Isaac, as far away from Derek as possible.

            Derek finishes cleaning up after them, thinking of how Stiles’s heart lurched any time Derek had felt him shoot a look in his direction. He’s on his way to the bathroom to have a shower when the door to his apartment is thrown open with such force it smacks against the wall.

            Derek tenses, a second away from wolfing out in anticipation of hunters, a monster, _something_ , but when he spins to face it, it’s—it’s Stiles. His eyes are on fire and his body is singing with a combination of fear and rage.

            “I don’t understand you,” he says, loud and shaky, slamming the door shut behind him. “Well, okay, no, I do. I understand that Kate fucked you up. What I don’t get is why that gives you permission to just—fuck with me.”

            Derek’s blood ceases simmering and seems to flash-freeze, because no, no, that is the _opposite_ of what Derek intended to do. Fucking with people was Kate’s area of expertise. It is not Derek’s. But when he thinks back to the last few months, about the taste of Stiles’s blood, about all those times he’s scented the arousal on Stiles and done nothing about it, he can, perhaps, believe it.

            Because he had sucked Stiles off against the Jeep and ditched Stiles like he was nothing, like _Stiles_ was nothing. Fucking with Stiles is exactly what it looks like. Derek can’t put into words how much he doesn’t want Stiles to feel like an object as a result of him.

            Although, to be fair, he isn’t even sure when he started to care.

            “I just—for some reason I like you, okay?” Stiles carries on like he’s so used to Derek not speaking that he knows to fill the silence on his own. “And it’s so hot and cold with you—I don’t know what this—” he gestures between the two of them, “ –even is. What is it, Derek?”

            Derek confesses the first thing that comes to his head, even though it’s not really much of an answer.

            “I don’t want to hurt you.” _But I want you_.

            “How, exactly, is leaving me with my pants down on the side of the road a—a neighbourly gesture?”

            “I didn’t—it was a mistake, Stiles.”

            Stiles looks like Derek just punched him in the face.

            “It was a mistake because I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not her. I’m not Kate.”

            “I know you’re not!” Stiles says, on a bitter, disbelieving laugh. “You’ll never be her, because you’ll never fuck with someone’s head just so you can burn their entire family alive!”

            This time Derek feels like he’s been punched, right in the solar plexus, but Stiles gamely takes a few steps closer.

            “I’m not a kid, Derek. I’m human, but I’m not fragile. All the lacrosse and the fucking _monsters_ have proven that I am not made of glass. Trust me.” He moves towards Derek like he’s approaching a skittish foal, closing the space between them inch by inch. “ _Trust me_ , Derek.”

            Stiles’s heart is steady. His eyes are sincere.

            “I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but—I promise I won’t hurt you. If I do, you’re free to—I don’t know, rip my throat out, do whatever you see fit—”

            “I don’t want to rip your throat out.”

            “Okay, so could you just, please, kiss me again?”

            Derek breathes out harshly. He can only hesitate for a moment before he slouches the half-inch or so forward to slot their mouths together.

            Stiles whines softly against his lips and wraps his arms around Derek’s neck to draw him in closer. When his lips part enticingly Derek _has_ to lick along Stiles’s soft bottom lip until Stiles deepens the kiss and presses his tongue against Derek’s. A jolt of pleasure goes straight to Derek’s toes. He wraps his arms around Stiles’s waist like he can somehow bring their bodies even closer together, and spins them both so he’s pushing Stiles’s ass into the back of the armchair. With a solid object to hold a weak-kneed Stiles upright, Derek can kiss him deeper and harder, hard enough that he can feel teeth on teeth, on lips and tongue. It’s not terrible. It’s fantastic.

            Derek is fiddling absently with the bottom of Stiles’s shirt. He has been since they started kissing, he realizes—and he needs to do so much more. Needs to touch so much more. He slides his hands up under the thin cotton of Stiles’s stupid Beatles graphic tee. Goosebumps rise in the wake of Derek’s fingertips. Stiles gasps, hips jerking, when his fingers pass over the bumps of his nipples. Stiles’s breath grows heavier the more Derek plays with them, so he keeps at it, circling them with his thumbs or scratching them lightly with his nails.

            Stiles likes it. He mutters the occasional, “fuck,” and “yes”, with every stroke, and Derek feels like a human being who wants to help another human being feel good, rather than a monster.

            Stiles is trembling already, and he’s hard, rubbing his erection against Derek’s thigh. With a groan Derek takes his hands out from under Stiles’s shirt and grips Stiles’s ass instead. He kisses him rough and wet and open-mouthed. When he speaks, their mouths are so close their lips brush.

            “Do you want—”

            “Yes, Derek, I want,” Stiles gasps, like he can’t believe Derek’s even _asking_. Derek chuffs out a laugh that turns into another kiss. “Fuck, I just want _you,_ ” Stiles continues, in between kisses, “however you’ll have me.”

            Derek freezes at that, because this is heading into territory he doesn’t want to touch, but Stiles just holds Derek’s face between his hands and leans back to look him in the eye.

            “What we have, it’s not fucked up. What’s fucked up is me getting boners over dead ghouls. But you don’t see me complaining, do you? I mean, I did get a blowjob out of it.”

            “Actually… I was wondering about that.”

            “It’s the adrenaline,” Stiles says, shrugging. He flushes a shade brighter. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but when we first met I had some conflicted feelings about you. The hotness and the possibly-a-serial-killer vibe were hard for me to deal with. My theory is that after being traumatized _numerous times_ in the midst of all the manly groping I find scary things hot.”

            Derek flinches back by a few centimeters.

            “You think I’m scary?”

            Stiles laughs and tugs him back in again, leaning in to kiss him quickly on the jaw.

            “No. I think you’re hot.” When Derek keeps staring unblinkingly at him, unsure yet again, Stiles adds, “And no. I don’t think you’re scary anymore. _Ghouls,_ though? Now those bitches are scary.”

            “I’ll kill any ghoul who’s hotter than me,” Derek says, smiling in spite of everything. 

            Derek’s hands are still in the general vicinity of Stiles’s ass, so he scoops Stiles up with ease and begins to stumble his way to his bedroom. Stiles is laughing and holding onto him for dear life, wrapped around him like a monkey. Once Derek reaches his bedroom he throws Stiles across his bed and clicks on the lamp beside it. Despite his enhanced sight, Derek wants to be able to see everything. Stiles is still sparkling with laughter, his body loose and more relaxed than Derek has seen it. He’s staring up at Derek, breathing so hard Derek can see the rise and fall of his chest.

            Stiles doesn’t seem frightened at all. He just looks like he wants to be fucked, or to fuck, and smells sharply of it, too. Stiles’s shirt is riding up past his bellybutton, revealing the dark trail of hair leading down to where Derek can see the line of his erection through his jeans. Derek opens his mouth to ask if he’s okay with this, but Stiles squeezes his cock through his jeans, a question in his eyes as he watches Derek watching him.

            _Do you want this?_

            Derek answers by taking off his own shirt and crawling up Stiles’s body, kissing him when he reaches his mouth. It’s even messier than before.

            “Take off your shirt,” Derek says. Stiles nearly smacks Derek in the face in his hurry to strip himself of his t-shirt and his plaid button-up. He’s as hot as Derek’s always imagined him to be, thinner underneath all the layers but with broader shoulders than Derek expected. Derek wants to kiss every mole he sees mapped out across Stiles’s chest. He tries his best, sucking the occasional hickey as he makes his way down Stiles’s body.

            He can’t help but go after Stiles’s nipples again, laving at one with his tongue while he pinches the other. It’s not long before Stiles is grinding up into Derek’s stomach with a steady rhythm, sobbing noises leaving him like it’s unbearable.

            “Derek, are you—” he starts, hands fisted in the blankets. “Can I touch you?”

            Derek pauses, realizing that it hadn’t been okay, before, for anyone to touch him. But now it is. Now he wants Stiles’s hands all over him, and he’s frustrated that they haven’t been, that his heart is in his throat from being asked. The wolf in him wants to snarl and bite at the very idea of it.

            “Yeah,” he says, finally rising to kiss Stiles again. Stiles’s hands grip the blanket under him even harder, however, before their lips can meet. He knows his eyes must be glowing red.

            “Just—tell me what you want,” Stiles says, keeping his hands carefully tangled in the comforter. “I mean, within reason, because sex is great so far, but, uh, virgin, here. Or I… I guess I _was_.”

            “I want everything, Stiles,” Derek says, taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down. “Just not now. Is it, I mean, can I—”

            “I’m glad we’re in agreement,” Stiles says, in a rush. “But you can fuck me, if you want. If it’s okay. If not, that’s okay, too.”

            Derek’s forehead tilts into Stiles’s, hands on either sides of his shoulders, and he sighs, and shivers.

            “It’s okay,” he says against Stiles’s mouth.

            Stiles runs his hands up and down Derek’s chest, hands shaky but somehow soothing as well. Derek can feel how rigid his own body is under Stiles’s hands—how much the ash-stained part of him wants to battle against his arousal. They are merely breathing into each other’s mouths when Stiles’s hands start to glide lower.  His eyelashes tickle Derek’s cheek. Derek can tell Stiles is watching him, waiting for Derek to bolt again. This time feels different, though. This time he won’t run, even if, in the end, he can’t do this.

            He takes one of Stiles’s hands, and Stiles immediately stills under his touch.

            Derek is a werewolf. Stiles is human and breakable. But it is Stiles who stops without question, without being told, without pulling away. It is Stiles who can be trusted. Fuck, it’s Stiles who has to be _protected_ from all those people who can’t be trusted.

            Derek pushes Stiles’s hand down, past the waistband of his jeans. Stiles responds with a pleased sort of hum while Derek helps by unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans. With Derek’s obvious permission, Stiles slips his hand past Derek’s boxer briefs and curls his hand around Derek’s erection.

            It feels like it’s been ages since Derek’s been touched, properly and not as fleetingly as a few nights ago. All the times before, with Kate, had happened in another life, for all he cares. When Stiles starts stroking him, clumsy at his angle, Derek’s hips fall towards him, his arms beginning to tremble on either side of Stiles’s head.

            Stiles thumbs at the wetness on Derek’s tip, and Derek groans like he’s dying. It’s too much and not enough, and their mouths meet whenever Derek remembers it’s there—remembers he’s allowed to taste it whenever he pleases. Before Derek knows it, Stiles’s lips are raw from kissing, his face burned by Derek’s stubble. He needs more, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it. So he just lets his own hips gyrate unevenly against every downward stroke of Stiles’s fist until he can’t take it anymore.

            “Stiles,” he stutters out. Stiles sucks in a deep breath as though Derek is actually worthy of his awe. “Can I—can I fuck you?”

            “Yes,” Stiles answers right away, hand squeezing reflexively around Derek’s cock. He’s not lying. Derek thinks this is the most honest Stiles has ever been. He parts from Stiles to roll off the side of his bed and rifle through the drawer on his nightstand, retrieving from it a bottle of lube, but no condoms, because he hasn’t had sex with anyone since he came back to Beacon Hills. 

            He turns to Stiles, lube held aloft. Stiles, lounging catlike on the bed, laughs at what must be a horrified look on Derek’s face.

            “No condoms?” Derek shakes his head, once. Stiles shrugs. “Do werewolves even get STDs?”

            The question relaxes Derek immediately; the only reason he’d need a condom would be for Stiles’s own peace of mind.

            “No, we don’t, but if a werewolf doesn’t use wolfsbane-infused condoms our come could turn you.”

            This time it’s Stiles’s turn to be horrified, before he realizes Derek’s smirking. He grabs Derek by the leg of his jeans, tugging him back onto the bed next to him. Derek drops the lube somewhere in the wrinkles of the comforter as Stiles pulls Derek next to him so they’re facing each other, on their sides. Stiles’s eyes are still bright with mirth, but they darken as Derek helps him out of his jeans and underwear.

            Derek has no qualms with being naked, despite every other qualm he has in his arsenal. He follows suit by stripping out of his remaining clothing. He manhandles Stiles a bit, between kisses and breathless groping, until Stiles is lying on his back, a pillow propped under his ass.

            “Are you still okay with this?” Derek asks, digging the fingertips of both his hands into the flesh of Stiles’s thighs.

            “I’m good,” Stiles says, the smallest tic of a lie belying his words. Derek knows anxiety when he sees it, or hears it, in this case, but it seems like Stiles trusts Derek enough to leave the _be careful_ unsaid.

            Derek studies Stiles’s body from where he is now perched on his knees between Stiles’s legs, taking in the way Stiles’s cock is leaking onto his stomach, to the way he licks his lips, nervous, and how his hands are tangled in the blankets again like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. The sight of him laid out before him, more than willing—it blindsides Derek with an especially violent wave of affection. Derek wants this to be good for Stiles. Not for his own benefit, but for Stiles, because Derek _likes him_.

            So Derek flattens himself on the bed, on his stomach, and licks and nibbles his way down Stiles’s left thigh to his groin. He idly kisses Stiles’s cock as he passes. Only when he strays lower does Stiles forget to breathe.

            “Oh, _shit_ ,” he nearly shouts, throwing his head back against the pillows as Derek parts his cheeks and prods at his hole with the tip of his tongue. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he continues, fisting the blankets again. Derek smiles. He is good at this, at taking people apart with his mouth and hands and cock. It’s easy to do it now, but somehow harder, more nerve-wracking, when it’s Stiles, who is huffing out little choked-off noises when Derek teases at his puckered entrance with the flat of his tongue.

            Stiles is pungent with arousal and his natural scent of bitter drugs and sugary coffee. His scent combined with the way he wriggles down into Derek’s tongue is maddening. Derek humps absently at the comforter beneath him as arousal tangles low in his abdomen with each of Stiles’s broken noises. Derek moans, lifting Stiles’s ass up a bit from the pillow to better lick into his entrance. He’s soaking it with spit – sex is gross, but Derek can take gross; likes sex more for how primitive it is – before Stiles lets out a long whine and gropes for Derek’s shoulders.

            “Okay, okay, Derek, seriously, just fuck me already,” he gasps out. His eyes are half-lidded, black and wild as he stares, pleadingly, at Derek.

            Derek is overwhelmed by how much he wants this, by how _long_ he’s wanted this. He takes a steadying breath and nods his agreement as he lets go of Stiles to retrieve the lube from where he’d abandoned it in the folds of the blankets and sits on his knees between Stiles’s legs. Derek is liberal with the lube, slicking up his own cock, delicately as he can, because he wants this to last for Stiles.

            And he wants to last, himself. Derek wants this, too. This is more than just itching a scratch, like every fuck before Stiles, including—yes, _including_ Kate. Kate didn’t count. _She didn’t fucking count._

            The realization hits him like a bus, and he freezes, lube in hand, hearing himself breathing heavier than before.

            “Derek?” Stiles asks, almost shyly, watching Derek as though something about him has changed in the last thirty seconds. And maybe something has. All Derek knows is that he wants Stiles, so bad, worse than he’d ever wanted Kate. Fuck, he didn’t want Kate at all. Not really. He had been young and stupid. But this is _Stiles_ , and Derek is Derek, and it’s probably insulting that he had been lumping Kate and Stiles in any even tangentially related categories. “Derek, we don’t have to—”

            “Shut up,” Derek says, roughly. Stiles is startled for only half a second before Derek leans up to place a brief, soothing kiss on his lips. Leaning over Stiles’s body, he lubes up his fingers and presses one into Stiles’s ass, which is far more relaxed, now, as it twitches to accommodate him. Stiles looses this frustrated needy noise and slams his head back into the pillows. Derek catches his gaze and says, “What would you like me to do?” He idly fingers his hole. Stiles narrows his eyes at him, cheeks pink.

            “It’s no big deal, or anything, but—” He punches the bed as Derek hits a sweet spot, “—if you don’t fuck me right now I might actually die.”

            Derek laughs, sliding his finger out, and while his own cock is still wet with lube he holds it by its base and directs it into Stiles’s hole, breaching it as gently as he can, inch by careful inch.

            “Breathe,” Derek tells him. Stiles is holding his breath, digging his nails into Derek’s hips. At Derek’s advice Stiles exhales shakily, his grip on Derek’s sides loosening as Derek presses in. Derek gives Stiles time to adjust and loosen around him even though he wants nothing more than to fuck him mercilessly. Derek reaches between them to pull at Stiles’s flagging cock. Only then does Stile grow restless, hips rising off the pillow like he wants to get even closer to Derek.

            So Derek moves at last, slow and steady; he is lucky to be a werewolf, or he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up over Stiles’s body as long as he has been. But he can, grinding into him deep and strong, seeking an angle that works for the two of them, grunting with each one that does. Stiles is running his hands up and down Derek’s body at random intervals, as though he can’t quite believe what’s happening, or that Derek is there, above him.

            Derek groans, approving, against Stiles’s throat. There’s a low burning ache beginning in Derek’s abdomen, telling him he won’t last much longer. He knows he won’t, because it’s so much better than any sex he’s had before. There’s just something about Stiles. Derek has to stop for a moment, panting, to stand up on his knees, and he lifts Stiles’s legs so the backs of his calves are on Derek’s shoulders. At their newer, more improved angle, Derek pulls out slowly before he pushes back in and begins to fuck Stiles in earnest.

            Stiles’s cock twitches as he lets out a gasping yell, and just like that Derek can feel himself being yanked closer to the precipice. He lets go of one of Stiles’s legs to fumble with the lube again, this time slicking up his hand so he can stroke Stiles’s cock again. His hand slides easily, perfectly, on Stiles’s flushed and gleaming cock, from root to tip, the noises wet and obscene.

            “Fuck, _fuck_ ,” Stiles groans, as Derek regains his pace inside of him as well. Stiles throbs around Derek’s cock, breathing like he’s broken through the surface of a pool, and then Stiles is coming and streaking both their stomachs. Something clenches inside Derek as Stiles writhes under him, still pulsing. It only takes half a dozen short thrusts before Derek tips over the edge with Stiles, panting and going rigid against him. His orgasm shakes through him, and Derek knows, he _knows_ , it’s the hardest he’s ever fallen.

            The knowledge destroys him, leaves him panting over Stiles and collapsing on top of him, a dead weight. Derek’s cock slips out of Stiles with the movement and draws a strangled noise from Stiles. Derek’s limbs are sex-heavy and loose, yet his instincts war against whether he should stay here, breathing in tandem with Stiles, or run, far, far away from this fragile human boy.

            But Stiles deigns to touch him despite Derek’s earlier inhibitions, gripping his back with both hands hard enough to bruise, were Derek anything, anyone else. Stiles’s heart hammers against Derek’s ribs. It’s loud in the quiet room as he clutches Derek even harder against him.

            “Stay,” Stiles says, shakily, and somehow it is both a question and a demand. Derek sighs against Stiles’s collarbone. It’s a death rattle, the fight escaping him in one fiery exhale. When Derek says nothing, moves nothing, Stiles says, again, steady and certain this time: “Stay.”

            Though Derek’s chest is tight and his jaw aches, he moves over to curl against Stiles’s side, to listen to the sureness of Stiles’s quick-beating heart with his head on his chest. Stiles’s muscles relax, finally, as he repositions his arms around Derek, one hand in his hair and the other on Derek’s stomach.

            Derek would do the same – ask Stiles to stay – if it wasn’t so obvious Stiles has been here all along, noisily trying to fill up what Kate burned away. Derek’s instincts long to riot against him for daring to sneak in, unnoticed. But this is Stiles, _Stiles_ , and that makes it… manageable. Especially when Stiles’s heart thuds against Derek’s cheek, echoes through Derek and whittles away at the six years of mistrust built into Derek’s bones.

            Stiles isn’t afraid anymore.

            Derek is.

            And that means something.

            Derek kisses Stiles over the rib, once, his body conforming to Stiles’s body, his fingers tracing the drying sweat and come and spit on Stiles’s stomach.

            “I’ll try,” Derek says. It’s all someone like him can do.


End file.
